Hollow At Best
by Monosodium Glutemate
Summary: REVISED Soi and Tomo talk to each other in private. Rated PG-13 for yaoi references. REVISED


MSG -- Sequel to "Footsteps" but it's not necessary to read that to understand this.  
  
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_  
  
  
You stood so boldly  
And up so high above me  
I wanted touch you.  
  
-- Author unknown  
_  
  
Soi slipped from Nakago's bed, out of his chambers and back to her own, as per her orders.   
  
The halls were always so quiet this late at night. The servants were in bed; the guards weren't posted near any of the Seishi's private chambers. It was her favorite time of night, when she escaped the depressing, empty presence of her beloved and his blankets and into the peaceful silence beyond his doors.  
  
Here, Soi could have a few moments of blissful sanctuary. In this dimly lit passage, opening onto the balconies and ledges and railings that looped around the palace; in the space between bedroom doors and inside the quiet aura of the sleeping soldiers behind them, Soi felt at home. No one was making her do anything; she didn't have to be anyone's toy, anyone's tool, or anyone's pawn. Here, she was just herself.   
  
She made her way down the hall, toward the balcony she liked to visit before she would send herself to bed. It overlooked a garden, and, when it was covered in moonlight, Soi could forget about everything: being a Seiryuu seishi, her past, and even Nakago if she let her mind drift enough. Her senses would be filled with the gentle scent of flowers and cool, wet grass, the shimmer of moon and stars in the black velvet sky, and the musical rushing of water from fountains and garden ponds.   
  
She pulled her robe a little tighter around her slender form and pushed open the final door. Beyond it was her little night haven, and she smiled faintly, closed her eyes, imagining it. It was her secret, the only thing she could have that really was hers.  
  
But it wasn't.  
_  
_Soi only caught a barest flash of a beautiful young man, whirling to face her, with silvery black hair that fell around him like the moonlight, and gold eyes that seemed muted against the creamy white of his skin. It lasted a heartbeat, and then it was the more familiar high-tailed hair and wide-shouldered opera robes, and if Soi hadn't known better, she'd have thought it a trick of the light..   
  
He said nothing, his expression blank, and turned back to the moon. She nodded, not so much to Tomo as to herself as an acceptance that- not for the first time, and under much more palatable circumstances than others- she had to share her secret place, and stepped forward to the rail of the balcony.   
  
And it was peaceful. The night was a comfortable weight around them, heavy, but without malice. Each understood the other too well for there to be any true ill will between them. Quietly, they stood together, so alike and yet so different, each wishing for the same thing they couldn't have. He was hurting, but his pain was a mirror of her own, and they both knew it. She kept her eyes forward, focused on the whisper-faint starlight on the flowers below them.  
  
"Couldn't sleep?"  
  
He nodded slightly, but would not raise his eyes to hers. "It's harder to rest an overworked mind than an exhausted body."   
  
Soi knew he'd meant the words to sting. She knew it was his nature, to lash out against others when he felt so hurt. She looked down, sighed. "He trusts you."  
  
His voice was softer now. "He lies with you."  
  
She didn't have an answer to that. "... It doesn't mean anything," she said, eyes cast to the gleaming silver moon. "None of it... he may trust you, but he lets me into his bed... and he may let me touch him, but he talks to you... Neither one of us will ever have him. Not in any waking reality, at least... I don't think anyone ever will."  
  
"No. They won't." She couldn't tell if he meant that Nakago was untouchable because he was so cold, or because Tomo wouldn't allow it.   
  
"Tomo."  
  
"Hn."  
  
"I want to ask you a question."  
  
"I won't say I'll answer."  
  
"Your illusions... do you ever use them on yourself?" She realized what that sounded like and quickly caught herself. "To help you sleep, or anything like that, I mean?"  
  
He seemed to pause and consider the question. After a long moment, he said, "...You realize that asking me that is like asking if you ever use your powers to shock yourself purposely." Any other time, that comment would have sounded derisive, or condescending, and probably followed by the dry, cackling laugh that made the palace servants skitter past his doors. But just then, it seemed almost lighthearted.  
  
Soi smiled.   
  
"But....." he said, softly, looking up. "Yes. Sometimes.." He cast his eyes downward again, fixated on the railing and the dim light gleaming off his fingernails. His voice was so much more pleasant when he was speaking, and his eyes- they were... _pretty_, in their own finely-edged, cooling gold sort of way. She recalled the image she had seen of the young man standing at the balcony before he became Tomo again, and realized that the young man's eyes had been a bit bigger, more vulnerable, a somewhat warmer golden shade. She wondered if that was intentional.  
  
"Sometimes...?" Soi prompted. It wasn't always a good idea to push Tomo, but... he seemed like he wanted to talk and couldn't, without permission.  
  
"I decided long ago that if Seiryuu chose to give me the ability to weave a world out of lies, I should be allowed to visit now and again..." As Tomo spoke, his voice got lower and lower, down to a bare whisper. "Always a hollow experience at best, but... it is _something_, and even that is better than the alternative... but, though it is better than nothing, even when I can suspend my disbelief enough to become immersed in it right down to the smells and tastes... something ruins it. Myself, more often than not," he whispered. The familiar bitter taste of guilt and disappointment in himself laced the almost-breathed words.  
  
Soi listened to him, somewhere between sympathetic and guilty, until the gentle, smooth tenor took a sharper edge.  
  
"Not that I would expect _you_ to understand."  
  
She wanted to glare at him, yell at him for being childish and silly, that he had no right to be angry that Nakago had no interest in men because he had no real interest in women, either, only his power and what could advance it. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him that she _did_ understand, that no one could understand better, because her experiences in the real world were as cold and empty as the ones he made for himself, and that Tomo should know that. She wanted to do something, anything to make him hear her and really understand and end this tension once and for all.   
  
But she didn't. Quietly, she looked at him. "I do understand," she murmured. "You're frustrated that what you want is so far out of your reach and even your dreams can't compare to what you wish for, and some part of you hates me because I have it... but you know I don't. You said so yourself; no one will _ever_ have him, Tomo.. not you or I or anyone else. You say that I cannot understand the feeling of reaching out for the one you love, knowing that it isn't real and never could be; try _having_ the one you love, and he is as living and breathing and alive as you, but he _chooses _to act like stone. At least in your world, you're the one pulling the strings."   
  
Tomo remained quiet for a few minutes, seemingly unmoved save the faint, quick blurring around the edges of his illusory makeup and costume. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and sighed. "Soi, we are pitiful... He is a murderer. A killer. He is cold, a ruthless power-hungry liar. He uses everyone, even ourselves, as tools and when one is finished doing its job, he casts it aside. He plays his tunes to make the world dance for him, and it does. We don't try to stop him, because we don't _want_ to... we want to see this man make his dreams come true, Soi."   
  
"Because we love him," she murmured. "Yes."  
  
"Because we love him," he echoed.   
  
It became closer to dawn as they stood in silence, and eventually, Soi headed inside and toward her own bedchambers for sorely needed sleep, leaving Tomo to the moonlight and the balcony. It was hers, but she could let him have it one night.  
  
Tomo looked over his shoulder and watched her go, long cranberry hair swaying in the breeze as she stepped back into the palace. When he was sure she was gone, he stared up at the moon and let the illusion flicker and disappear, like the light of a dying firefly, and he stood in only a thin, white robe and his long, silvery hair. His lips curved up in a tiny, bitter smile, just as he closed his eyes and let one hot tear trail down his cheek.  
  
  
  
_Owari_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
